Two years later, Gene Chizik continues to show he was the right man for the Auburn job

AUBURN -- Gene Chizik still barely acknowledges the criticism that followed his hiring as Auburn's football coach in late 2008, and, even though it is well within his rights, won't allow himself even an "I told you so" for his detractors.

Chizik is too busy for that. He's trying to win a national championship.

Auburn's head football coach is as focused as ever, as he was when he began rebuilding the Tigers before the 2009 season, through this year's 13-0 record, and now in preparing for the BCS national championship game against Oregon on Jan. 10.

He's proven a legion of naysayers wrong, from the national media that criticized his hiring because he had a losing record, wasn't Turner Gill, or both; to one of the school's most recognizable athletes, who publicly said the Tigers hired the wrong guy; to Auburn fans, who questioned their athletics director's decision to hire a coach who was 5-19 at Iowa State.

And yet Gene Chizik has Auburn playing for it all.

"Just because of our lack of depth, a reasonable person wouldn't have thought two years ago we'd be playing for the national championship," said Auburn AD Jay Jacobs. "But the great thing about college football, and Auburn football, is you don't know what's in a man's heart."

The success has been a boon for Auburn, and Chizik is happy for the school and its football program to reap the rewards.

"I think it's obvious what it does for your program in terms of exposure, in terms of young guys saying, 'Wow, this is a place that is going to have a chance to be in contention. This is a team that's in a great league that's on the rise,'" Chizik said. "I think it helps in every way, shape and form for our program, both the players that are here and the ones that are considering coming. I think it's huge."

It was a far different scenario, at least for the outsiders, when Chizik was hired.

An al.com poll in the days after he was hired found only 15.1 percent liked Auburn's choice. "If you listened to the fans, Armageddon was coming," remembered Tony Barnhart of CBS on the first anniversary of Chizik's hire. But the poll numbers jumped to 79.8 percent approval before the bowl last season. Today, Chizik might win any popularity poll by acclamation.

That's now. An ESPN headline saw it differently when he was hired: "Auburn Tigers downgrade in hiring Gene Chizik." And Chizik, through no fault of his own, became talk-show and Internet fodder.

Jay Jacobs

Chizik knew the game

Auburn was criticized for not making then-University of Buffalo coach Turner Gill its first black head football coach, and former basketball star Charles Barkley led the charge, saying Gill's resumé was better.

Maybe in the Mid-American Conference, but not in the SEC and not in the Big 12, where Chizik won 29 straight games during one stretch as the defensive coordinator at Auburn and Texas. Chizik knew big-time football, knew recruiting in the South and knew the speed of the game.

Fourteen straight wins and last year's top-five recruiting class suggest he's put his knowledge to good use, and that Jacobs was right. Chizik is 21-5 in two years at Auburn. Gill, in his first foray into big-time football, went 3-9 at Kansas this season.

"It's just like I told the team on that Thursday night before I started the interviews on Sunday: 'I'm going to hire the best guy for you,'" Jacobs said. " I'm not interested in winning a press conference. I'm interesting in winning ballgames and developing young men. I had a real good idea where it'd end up, but, at the same time, I had to do my due diligence and talk to other candidates.

"Looking back two years later, Gene has done exactly everything he said he'd do, from the first interview to building this program back. Gene put together a blueprint, and he stood by his plan. He worked his plan. These football players have come to trust in these assistant coaches and in Gene. Some of these guys have gone through three coordinators, so to be undefeated is nothing short of miraculous."

Former Auburn coach Pat Dye said while playmakers Cam Newton and Nick Fairley deserve a lot of the on-the-field credit, Chizik has been the glue.

"You can cut it any way you want to cut it, but Gene has done an unbelievable job in keeping that team focused, keeping them getting better and making them believe they can do something that nobody thought they could do," Dye said.

"To think we've got that kind of football coach at Auburn with that kind of leadership and that kind of quality, that's exciting to me."

Dye knows about unpopular hires. He was one when Auburn hired him from Wyoming in 1981.

"I was the fourth, fifth or sixth choice," Dye said. "They would have liked to have had Bobby Bowden or Grant Teaff or Jackie Sherrill or somebody else when they hired me. But all of that is just fodder.

"Gene knew he was the best coach for the job and wasn't afraid to take it. And I knew I was the best coach for the job when they offered it to me. But Gene had an advantage because all he had to do was convince Jay Jacobs. I had to convince half-a-dozen folks, some who didn't know anything about football."

Moments in time

Gene Chizik: On the job (Birmingham News / Hal Yeager)

There were infamous moments along the way, including a single fan who showed up at the Auburn airport to shout down Jacobs at the end of the search process, saying he wanted a winner. The incident became a YouTube hit.

Jacobs said he doesn't feel vindicated by Chizik's success.

"Because I don't think anybody was vindictive," he said. "That guy represented hundreds, if not thousands, of Auburn people. The Auburn family passion just came through in him. If more people had been tracking the flight, there probably would have been more people there.

"He's as focused of a man as I've ever seen," Jacobs said. "He doesn't let outside distractions bother him, just like this team. A team will take on the personality of their coach. They play smart and he's smart. Distractions? We've had a few. But he doesn't let it bother him."

Chizik has stood by quarterback Cam Newton in the face of distractions with the NCAA. Newton won the Heisman Trophy with Chizik's support -- and a spectacular season.

Chizik, in the isolated world of football, presses on.

"We can't control everybody's opinion. We don't try to. Never going to be able to," he said. "Our fan base has been great for the most part. The majority of our fans have been great since the day me and my family came back to Auburn.

"There's no vindication in my world. That's not how I live. That's not what's important to me. What's important to me is that as the head coach at Auburn, I give our football team and our fans a chance to win every week and that we do the best job we can as coach, and that's it. It's that simple."